User talk:Good Pharisee

July 2018
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page Fred Harrison (author) has been reverted. Your edit here to Fred Harrison (author) was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (https://www.youtube.com/user/geophilos/|Geophilos) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. If the external link you inserted or changed was to a media file (e.g. a sound or video file) on an external server, then note that linking to such files may be subject to Wikipedia's copyright policy, as well as other parts of our external links guideline. If the information you linked to is indeed in violation of copyright, then such information should not be linked to. Please consider using our upload facility to upload a suitable media file, or consider linking to the original. If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 00:03, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Help me!
I have done a lot of work creating a bibliography for an economics author, Fred Harrison, who has an entry on Wikipedia. The bibliography is derived from physical books and materials published, in my possession or that I have physically viewed, as is the case with any standard bibliography, except that for Wikipedia it is more of a checklist of information sufficient to enable a reader to identify works to obtain for further reading. I have not included the detailed descriptions of the physical details of an edition as standard bibliographies also include. I am an antiquarian bookseller by trade and rely on bibliographies for my own work. Another person is determining that I have done this improperly, but I can see no reason why this should be so and they are not identified. I cannot find any quide as to how Wikipedia expects a bibliography to be made. Where can I find this? I am a new user and don't know my way around. Glad of advice.

Please help me with...

Good Pharisee (talk) 13:15, 10 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I have reverted the edits since this very long list of publications is not sourced - the publications don't have a reference. More than this, Wikipedia articles try to be well balanced in their scope and content. In this case, this very extensive bibliography overwhelms an otherwise quire short article. This makes it look very much like promotion of the subject rather than an encyclopaedic article. Listing a few key publications and noting that he has published x other papers/ books/ articles is fine, as long as it is sourced. The current edit is the sort of thing usually encountered when individuals are editing articles about themselves or their literary agent is trying to promote their publications. Neither situation makes for an encyclopaedic article.  Velella  Velella Talk 13:41, 10 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Generally speaking, a Wikipedia article should be written to read. It should not be used as a catalogue, directory, or database of information for readers to follow up. This principle is not absolute, and we do accept brief sections listing links, other relevant articles, and so on, but extensive listing of the kind you have done is not considered appropriate. There are many web sites which do seek to give such bibliographical catalogues, but Wikipedia is not one of them. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 13:49, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the helpful comments. Could you clarify for me the following?: I understand your point about overbalancing. However, it was my intention to also increase the length of the article itself which does not draw out the principle areas of interest in this man's work. Would you not agree that a Wikipedia article should enable the reader to leave it having been introduced to the principal ideas of, in this case, a writer on political economy? (Just as you would expect from the Encyclopaedia Britannica for instance.    However, in the absence of that as yet, it would be possible to greatly reduce the length of the bibliography by simply, as you indicate, confining book listings to those that are primary indicative works. The existing bibliography I found here is very uneven in that it gives no dates publisher etc for several titles and more significant titles are excluded. And then give a link to a complete bibliography on an external site? Is that allowable? (It was not my intention to make an act of promotion hence I made no qualitative comments in my bibliographic text. I merely assumed interested readers wanting to find their own entry points into the individuals work, nor am I promoting his work (I am a rare bookseller) as there is no market for such economic writing except in very rare instances of long dead writers and anyway I have no stock to sell!) I am certainly interested in Harrison's work but I would not be able to write a bibliography if I were not. Most contributions to Wikipedia must presuppose interest to make the effort. However, it is not commercial. I am also confused by the notion that I quote no source. For a bibliography the only verifiable source is an actual copy of the book. The only other source would be a link to an existing bibliography on another site, compiled from inspection of actual copies. But there is no bibliography for this interesting writer. So what kind of source, in this case would fulfill your intention? Or do I misunderstand your point? I apologise if I seem to be querying everything, but it is my first time of attempting to do more than use Wikipedia by editing a page. However, I am also surprised that Wikepedia "should not be used as a catalogue, directory, or database of information for readers to follow up". That is exactly how I use it myself in my work as a cataloguer of rare books - the ones I do sell! To me Wikipedia has overtaken many traditional means of research and it is because it has a high enough level of accuracy and comprehensiveness to provide an access point for further research. I need to use my own reference library less and less. Being an entertaining read does not seem to recognise its actual and most significant contribution today. For me it is slowly taking over as a source of information because it provides the hard details of factual and conceptual knowledge. Does this seem unreasonable?

Good Pharisee (talk) 16:06, 10 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The question is not what is, or what is not reasonable but simply what are the rules, policies and norms of Wikipedia. Articles are intended to be encyclopaedic, content must be verifiable using independent and reliable sources, content should not be promotional and the article should be balanced. I would strongly suggest spending some time reading Wikipedia's guidance and policies and editing other articles. Any editor who comes new to Wikipedia and edits only one article and then argues strongly for those edits to be retained, is always going to challenged as to motives and intent. I strongly suspect that Wikipedia is not the encyclopaedia that you would wish it to be. If this is the case, then it may be that there may be other sites better suited to such detailed bibliographies.  Velella  Velella Talk 08:33, 11 July 2018 (UTC)